Kitchen Photos Update

"I cannot tell what the dickens his name is."

--Shakespeare from "The Merry Wives of Windsor"

Those of you who check here regularly probably already know this, but I wanted to put it out there with maybe more detail or reasons behind our decision. The decision being that we're not discussing any possible names outside of our personal awesome twosome.

We've seen it happen before where somebody asks and Mom or Dad tells, and then the asker makes a sour face like, "Oh really? You're saddling your kid with that? Well, I for one, do not approve." And we're not talking about your Apples, or your Rumers, or even your Pilot Inspektors, but honest-to-goodness non-celebrity normal people names. We're choosing not to let this happen.

Another thing is that we want to meet the little nipper, say hello, and make sure the name fits the boy. He might need a little time to warm up to this strange new world he finds himself in, though hopefully he'll recognize a couple of friendly voices. And that kind of goes hand-in-hand with another reason, that being there still needs to be some element of surprise, for us as well of everyone else. We know he's a he but we'll save the moniker until his arrival.

All that being said, I can say there's a master list of about 20 or so names. Of those we each have our favorites, some of which one of us likes but the other can't stand. And some that we both actually like. Those are our front-runners. I can also say that there are no names on the list like those above, no Moon Units, no Engelberts, so you may sleep easier knowing that. 

Until his birth day though, enjoy the mystery.

Olympic Kicker

10:35 pm, Monday, 8/11/08... men's gymnastics from Beijing on tv. Michael Phelps won his 3rd gold just a few minutes ago.

Pam's watching tv and says suddenly, "He's kicking and I can see it." (She noticed it out of the corner of her eye.)

"Shut. Up," I say. We knew this was going to happen at some point, in fact we'd just been told to expect it, but neither of us were really thinking it would be happening now.

"No, check it out."

So I do. I watch her belly rise and fall with breaths a couple of times. I try to pick one spot to concentrate on, and for some reason I keep going to the middle, under her belly button, even though I know he's not laying up and down but sideways. Pam points to the lower left side of her belly and says, "He's kicking over here." And then I see one of the trippiest things I think I'll ever see--a vibration that isn't in time with a breath. She says, "There. Did you see that?"

"Yes!" And I feel my eyes bulge out of my head.

I only see it the one time, but it's enough. Seriously. This is way crazy. Wicked crazy. In. Sane.

Also, we are at ear of corn. 

9:45pm, Thursday, July 17, 2008

First trip to the store to satisfy sudden ice cream need.

(I got 2 flavors, just to be safe: Dreyers w/Butterfingers and Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie. We have satisfaction.)

Movement Detected

The first time it felt like a wave moved from one side of Pam's belly to the other.

Then she felt something that she likened to "that part at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring when the elves are fighting [Sauron] and there's that deep sound and wave that moves through them. It was just like that."

And last night I felt a series of rapid movements, faint and small, but definitely there.

They call this "the quickening."

We're halfway there people. Size of... a banana!

The anatomical ultrasound happened last week. Everything is as it should be.

Circumcision update: currently leaning to not doing it. I really thought more people would comment on that, and not just to me, personally. Oh well, it is a sensitive subject.  

We sold the futon. It was in the way of future crib. Next up, selling the dining room table and getting a smaller one. Then, a smaller desk, and we'll be able to redo the office into his room (a large purple dragon may take over a wall). And a sewing table I'd better check if my mom wants.

Speaking of my mom, she decided it would be impossible to spoil the kid from Houston so she's moving up here with my grandmother. We're doing all we can to Austinize her asap.

Congratulations are in order to a few other people we know...

Just hitched: Pam's sister, Amy, made it official with her fella, Don.

Just agreed to get hitched: our friends Rob & Robyn and Casey & Kelley (apparently there's a marriage bug going around)

Also in a family way: our friends Phil & Jen, about 10 weeks behind us. Pam & Jen went to pre-natal yoga last night for the first time in preparation for baby expulsion.

Stripping mastic off cement floors is for sucks.

That's all the news from here....

Operation House Re-Do 4 Kid A

We've got about 1000 sq ft in our house and only 2 bedrooms, one of which has been the office/guest room. So that room will become the kid's room which means that the dining room is going to become the dining room/office which means that the kitchen needs to be redone so we can have some more storage space and just a better working room in general. 

We're moving the back door from the kitchen to the dining room so we ordered French doors this week. Our friend Trevor (the Elder) is overseeing the project so he came over and widened the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. The next day, we rented a floor stripper because we're going to do stained cement floors. We started in the dining room, which had 2 layers of acrylic tile. The stripper peeled off her clothes.... er, sorry... peeled off the tile as easy as mowing the lawn. It probably took about 30-40 minutes total.

Then we turned around to do the kitchen and hit the proverbial brick wall. The linoleum flooring did not want to let go. I went back to the Home Depot and bought a couple of new blades. That helped for about 2 minutes. Then about this time, it was time for Pam and I to go see the doctor so I had to take off. When we got back 2 hours later, Trevor had done some research and was now scoring the linoleum and pouring boiling water over it. This helped a great deal but it still wasn't as easy as mowing the lawn. Eventually, we got thru it all (about 8 hours for both rooms) though there are still some small batches of backing on the floor and age-old black remnants of adhesive in both rooms. We're going to get some eco-friendly stripping solvent from some friends today and that's how Trevor and I will be spending tomorrow.

A few pics below. Unfortunately, that's not snow floating in the air but dust particles.

Kid A

This isn't the greatest quality ever, but when the doctor can only record in VHS....

Regardless, you can still see him moving around (big stretch!), watch and listen to his heart beat, and see some of his bone structure, like his spine and arms and legs.

The sonographer was taking some measurements of some of the bones, telling us he's growing just fine. You can't really make it out in the clip but we were able to see the hemispheres of his brain; they were totally ready for learning.  Later, you may realize that you're looking up from below his feet. This was when she was trying to determine if he was a dude or dudette. She couldn't tell, but the doctor would in a few minutes.

This video is not even 6 minutes long but it seemed a lot longer while it was happening. Also, keep in mind the little nipper is maybe 4" long here.

The First Cut is the Deepest

A few weeks back I breathed a sigh of relief when we thought the kid was going to be a girl... at least I wasn't going to have to concern myself with one very important decision... circumcision. And then, hey-ooooohhhhhh, here's a little surprise, it's a boy and you (we) get to decide whether to cut or not to cut.

It's 11:15pm on a Sunday and I'm in Waco for a shoot. So here's the wikepedia page (featuring some non-porn but still NSFW example photos) on the decision at hand. If anything were to generate some comments I'd expect it to be this post, so what say you? As a circumcised child of the 70s, I'll admit it, I'm torn as to what to do now in 2008.

Remove Pins & Needles

The kid is a-ok according to the fine folks working in the lab. What up, Genecare!

No spina bifida, no downs syndrome, no any other scary stuff.

Hooray!

And chromosomal confirmation that he is indeed a he, him, male, fella, guy, and a dude.

Pronoun Day

So...

...um.

We weren't expecting an answer today.

But sometimes, you get the unexpected, or rather, it gets you. 

Don't ever believe the old wives' tales, because in spite of all signs pointing to our fetal-American being a girl, they were wrong. 

The doctor very clearly saw the gender-specific defining physical feature of our son. We also saw his brain, spine, ribcage, and saw and heard his heartbeat again, down to 147 beats per minute. (It gets slower as he grows.) We watched him put his hands in front of his face, shake them out to his side and stretch out his legs.

It was  He is amazing. Check him out: 

It's been a long day. I'll try and revisit it in the future to give you more of a feel for it all.